“I wish to Heaven I was married,”she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing.“I'm tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I'm tired of acting like I don't eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired.I'm tired of saying‘How wonderful you are!'to fool men who haven't got one-half the sense I've got, and I'm tired of pretending I don't know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they're doing it……I can't eat another bite.”
“Try a hot cake,”said Mammy inexorably.
“Why is it a girl has to be so silly to catch a husband?”
“Ah specs it's kase gempmums doan know whut dey wants. Dey jes'knows whut dey thinks dey wants.An'givin'dem whut dey thinks dey wants saves a pile of mizry an'bein’a ole maid.An’dey thinks dey wants mousy lil gals wid bird's tastes an’no sense at all.It doan make a gempmum feel lak mahyin’a lady ef he suspicions she got mo’sense dan he has.”
“Don't you suppose men get surprised after they're married to find that their wives do have sense?”
“Well, it's too late den. Dey's already mahied.‘Sides, gempmums specs dey wives ter have sense.”
“Some day I'm going to do and say everything I want to do and say, and if people don't like it I don't care.”
“No, you ain',”said Mammy grimly.“Not while Ah got breaf. You eat dem cakes.Sop dem in de gravy, honey.”
“I don't think Yankee girls have to act like such fools. When we were at Saratoga last year, I noticed plenty of them acting like they had right good sense and in front of men, too.”
Mammy snorted.
“Yankee gals!Yas'm, Ah guess dey speaks dey minds awright, but Ah ain'noticed many of dem gittin'proposed ter at Saratoga.”
“But Yankees must get married,”argued Scarlett.“They don't just grow. They must get married and have children.There's too many of them.”
“Men mahys dem fer dey money,”said Mammy firmly.
Scarlett sopped the wheat cake in the gravy and put it in her mouth. Perhaps there was something in what Mammy said.There must be something in it, for Ellen said the same things, in different and more delicate words.In fact, the mothers of all her girl friends impressed on their daughters the necessity of being helpless, clinging doe-eyed creatures.Really, it took a lot of sense to cultivate and hold such a pose.Perhaps she had been too brash.Occasionally she had argued with Ashley and frankly aired her opinions.Perhaps this and her healthy enjoyment of walking and riding had turned him from her to the frail Melanie.Perhaps if she changed her tricks—But she felt that if Ashley succumbed to premeditated feminine tricks, she could never respect him as she now did.Any man who was fool enough to fall for a simper, a faint and an“Oh, how wonderful you are!”wasn't worth having.But they all seemed to like it.
If she had used the wrong tactics with Ashley in the past—well, that was the past and done with. Today she would use different ones, the right ones.She wanted him and she had only a few hours in which to get him.If fainting, or pretending to faint, would do the trick, then she would faint.If simpering, coquetry or emptyheadedness would attract him, she would gladly play the flirt and be more emptyheaded than even Cathleen Calvert.And if bolder measures were necessary, she would take them.Today was the day!
There was no one to tell Scarlett that her own personality, frighteningly vital though it was, was more attractive than any masquerade she might adopt. Had she been told, she would have been pleased but unbelieving.And the civilization of which she was a part would have been unbelieving too, for at no time, before or since, had so low a premium been placed on feminine naturalness.
As the carriage bore her down the red road toward the Wilkes plantation, Scarlett had a feeling of guilty pleasure that neither her mother nor Mammy was with the party. There would be no one at the barbecue who, by delicately lifted brows or out-thrust underlip, could interfere with her plan of action.Of course, Suellen would be certain to tell tales tomorrow, but if all went asScarlett hoped, the excitement of the family over her engagement to Ashley or her elopement would more than overbalance their displeasure.Yes, she was very glad Ellen had been forced to stay at home.
Gerald, primed with brandy, had given Jonas Wilkerson his dismissal that morning, and Ellen had remained at Tara to go over the accounts of the plantation before he took his departure. Scarlett had kissed her mother good-by in the little office where she sat before the tall secretary with its paper-stuffed pigeonholes.Jonas Wilkerson, hat in hand, stood beside her, his sallow tight-skinned face hardly concealing the fury of hate that possessed him at being so unceremoniously turned out of the best overseer's job in the County.And all because of a bit of minor philandering.He had told Gerald over and over that Emmie Slattery's baby might have been fathered by any one of a dozen men as easily as himself—an idea in which Gerald concurred—but that had not altered his case so far as Ellen was concerned.Jonas hated all Southerners.He hated their cool courtesy to him and their contempt for his social status, so inadequately covered by their courtesy.He hated Ellen O'Hara above anyone else, for she was the epitome of all that he hated in Southerners.